


the skies above

by esteemed_professor



Series: Nikole Shepard [1]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Earthborn (Mass Effect)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-29
Updated: 2016-07-29
Packaged: 2018-07-27 12:16:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7617763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/esteemed_professor/pseuds/esteemed_professor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Before she joined the Alliance, Shepard's life revolved around one simple rule: survival at all costs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the skies above

**Author's Note:**

> this is my first time writing fic please be gentle

Her earliest memories are of the streets.

Pavement baked by the unforgiving sun, scorching the blackened soles of small feet as they zig-zag across the road, like a scattering school of fish. The streets feature primarily in her recollections because they are the fertile hunting ground of the pack of beggar children that inevitably feature in every cityscape, permanently underfoot its urban denizens. A new crop rises from the gutters as winter crawls into spring, and graduate from mild annoyance to full-fledged pest by the time tourist season is in full swing.

Skinned knees and wide eyes are decidedly effective weapons against the conscious of any wealthy foreigner, and their spoils are plentiful for the season. Their high-pitched cries of “ _¡por favorcito, señor!_ ” are accompanied by shrieks of childish laughter as their ragtag band is shoo’d from the storefronts. They are light-hearted and carefree, despite starvation dogging their heels; they have never known anything else, and so have no standard by which to compare. Their world does not extend beyond the neighborhood’s boundaries and the gravcars clouding the smog-laden sky.

But just as summer fades into autumn, childhood stretches into the early stages of adolescence, and their hollow cheeks and pleading voices no longer elicits the pitied reactions that have kept them alive so far in their short lives. New children take their places, and they are thrown to the cold mercies of a metropolis that never has enough resources to care for the citizens that occupy society’s lowest tier. Many of them die -- of starvation, illness, or exposure -- and the culling leaves its survivors hardened by the harsh realities of urban life on Earth.

She remembers the desperation that comes with abject poverty, and the single-minded drive to _survive_ through one more night. But safety comes in numbers, and so does prosperity, so there comes a time when the choice is between joining one of the many gangs that plague the cityscape, or become a victim of the violence that they perpetuate. She chooses survival. She thinks, back then, that she always will.

 _Los Rojos_ are in constant competition with rival groups to carve out a piece of the city’s underbelly and all of the profitable ventures that accompany it. They’re neither the biggest, nor the smallest, but sit somewhere in the middle; too small to pull any real attention from law enforcement, but big enough that most of the other gangs respect their territory. Joining a group like theirs doesn’t involve walking into a recruitment office and signing up -- _they_ pick _you_ , which means that every move you make in their sight is an audition of sorts. She’s already passed the first test, simply by merit of not starving to death with so many others.

But in the end, _Los Rojos_ are not quite so picky with their fresh meat as they like to pretend, and even in her malnourished state, they see her broad shoulders and cold eyes and decide that her potential is worth the extra mouth to feed. And so she decides, for a second time, to survive, regardless of the cost. She is certain now that, given the option, she will always choose to _survive_.

 

* * *

 

There’s a hierarchy in gang life, but it is not always so clear to those on the bottom rungs of the ladder. Her first mistake is assuming that she, as a newbie, has a right to call anything her own. She is in the process of quietly savoring a _milanesa_ , when her food is suddenly yanked away by one of the older boys, Filipe.

“ _¡Qué mala leche!_ Looks like there’s no more food left,” he crows, right before her bony knuckles make contact with his jaw.

It’s a short confrontation. The others slip out from the shadows and grab her, hold her still -- with no small amount of effort on their parts -- while Filipe spits and curses. They let him take out his anger on her underfed frame, until they’re certain she’s past the point of being able to retaliate, and only then do they let her go.

“Don’t you know better than to challenge your elders?” growls one of them as they return to their respective loitering posts.

She counts the seconds after she hears the last retreating set of footsteps. Only when she has counted out five minutes does she dare get back on to her feet. Everything hurts, her pride most of all, but she is alive. Another lesson in survival, she now understands, is being able to take a beating.

In the years following, she takes many beatings, but every time, she gets back onto her feet afterwards, and reminds herself that she is _alive_. Survival is the only thing that matters.

 

* * *

 

She becomes an expert at keeping her head down and escaping the notice of those that might become a threat to that survival. But she watches, and listens, and quietly obeys when asked to do her part in perpetuating the violence that keeps them all alive. She does not pick fights, but she does not hesitate to fight when it is asked of her, and _Los Rojos_ soon discover that she is _good_ at fighting, and seek to turn it to their advantage. When someone needs hurting, they send her, and she obeys without protest.

Things don’t always go as planned. Sometimes, she is sent farther up in the city, to the Buenos Aires that the wealthier classes see. Here, the sun is not blotted out by gravcars. Here, the air does not stink of burning ozone and abject poverty. Here, there is life and love and laughter, and as much as she wants to hate it, hate _them_ for having so much more than her and taking it for granted every single day, she secretly enjoys these trips. But she does not know these streets above like she knows her own down below, and it leads to complications. After she narrowly escapes a gravcar explosion -- they are so much closer up here, and she never learned not to wander near the lower skyways, never had to -- with a few minor burns and a racing heart, she does not volunteer to return to those sunlit streets above. She does not like being out of her element.

 

* * *

 

She is seventeen, no longer the malnourished child with cold fury in her eyes, but not quite an adult, either. She toes the line between “grown up” and “little kid”, and, as is common in those trying teenage years, she holds a certain amount of resentment for the world at large. She has no one to guide her, and though she has formed a perverted sort of kinship with the other members of her gang, would not go so far as to call any of them _friend_. They still send her out to be their muscle, but she finds herself wandering the streets more often than not, with no particular destination in mind.

There is a small stretch of no-man’s-land where the filth of the city’s underbelly meets the sunlight of Buenos Aires above. As humanity continued to expand and develop on Earth, they quickly found themselves running out of land. With the invention and widespread use of gravcars, they began to build _up_ instead of _out_. As such, cities like Buenos Aires have multiple tiers, the topmost of which are the skylanes reserved for gravcar traffic. The space between, however -- the streets that slope upwards into wide ramps, empty of life save a little pedestrian traffic -- sees very little use. Rarely do those born below venture above, and never would those from above leave the sunlight in favor of the darkness below.

But she pays no attention to where her feet bring her these days, and is surprised when she finds herself at this intersection of high and low. She might have simply continued to wander, blissfully unaware of her changing surroundings, but something shook her from her reverie, though she cannot quite figure out what it was. She turns to go, to skitter back into the depths below, when it happens again: she hears a sound. Not just any sound -- a sob. A young woman’s voice. Crying.

She is not alone in this in-between, she realizes. On a spot of level ground, a landing between ramps, are a pair of figures. A young woman -- a girl, really, she looks no older than fourteen or fifteen -- is crumpled on the asphalt, holding her hands over her head as if to protect herself from an incoming blow. Above her looms a boy that Nikole recognizes vaguely as a member of another gang down below. The girl’s face is swollen with new bruising, and a thin trickle of crimson runs from her split lip.

The pair have not noticed her yet. She hovers in the shadow of her indecision, urging her mind to make itself up, when the girl sees her. Their eyes meet. The girl is crying. Tears stain her bruised cheeks. She mouths something silently, pleadingly.

 _Ayúdenme._ Help me.

Every instinct screams at her to stop when she feels her feet propelling her forwards. To turn back, keep her head down, don’t think about it, mind her own business. That tiny, insistent voice in the back of her head reminds her to _survive_ , that _survival_ is the only thing that matters. But there’s a new voice, there, too, and it chants a different word: _protect_.

The boy has noticed that they are not alone, and turns to face her as she approaches, her feet steady despite the blood rushing in her ears. His confusion twists into a grimace when he notices the purpose in her stride.

“Fuck off,” he growls, and she can see thin lines of blood on his bare arms from where his victim raked his skin with her nails to fight him off. The voice grows louder. _Protect_.

“You first,” she replies, amazed at how calm she sounds to her own ears.

He sneers, making him even uglier. “You going to make me?”

“Yeah,” she says, and his nose makes a satisfying _crunch_ when it meets her fist.

 

* * *

 

When the police arrive, she cooperates fully, holding both hands out in front of her and standing perfectly still while an officer checks her for hidden weapons and cuffs her narrow wrists. They call for an ambulance, and she smiles privately, even as they put her in the cruiser and slam the door shut. It is rare that law enforcement pays any attention to the dealings of the lower city, and even rarer that they care to expend resources on admitting a beaten thug to a hospital. She figures that they were close enough to the sunlight that the police had to make a show of getting involved. She doesn’t much care either way.

The station is full of activity and noise, but they herd her into a quiet room with an overstuffed couch and an out-of-date terminal. She sits in a high-backed metal chair while an ununiformed woman cleans and bandages her bloodied knuckles. Nobody speaks to her, except to give the occasional instruction, and so she remains silent. People come and go from her luxurious prison cell, but nobody drags her away to the gallows (metaphorical or otherwise), nor do they give her any clue as to what her fate might be. They do not remove the cuffs.

They let her wait long enough that she begins to wonder why they don’t just stick her in an _actual_ jail cell and be done with it, when the door creaks open again. To her surprise, the man who enters is not wearing a police uniform -- instead, he is dressed in military fatigues. She gets the distinct feeling that she’s missing a key piece of information, here. Surely pulverizing some nameless thug with her fists wouldn’t be worth the attention of the goddamn _Alliance_. Surely.

He drags a chair from behind the desk to sit directly across from her, but stays well out of arm’s reach. She has the strange urge to laugh at the thought that a trained soldier should act wary of a skinny teenager in handcuffs. The man settles himself in the chair and takes stock of her in silence for a while before speaking. There’s something vaguely familiar about him, though she’s sure they’ve never met.

“Name?” he asks, the lilt of his accent suggesting that he’s a local. She mentally files that away for later.

“Nikole,” she replies, keeping her tone carefully neutral. He looks unimpressed, and continues to stare in anticipatory silence. She relents, “Shepard. Nikole Shepard.”

He nods, and marks something in the datapad he’s holding. He lets her wait a moment again before continuing. “Do you know why you’re here?” When he addresses her, he looks up from the datapad, giving her his full attention.

“That’s a dumb question,” she responds, with the sort of lazy insolence only a teenager can muster. She has long since given up any pretense of self-preservation. Whatever mess she’s walked into can’t be undone now. Might as well be upfront.

To her surprise, he smirks. “Is it?” he asks, leaning back in his seat. “You could have killed that boy. How do you know they aren’t writing you up on murder charges right now?”

“I didn’t kill him,” she intones, dully, and grimaces. “He might be eating through a straw for a few months, but he’ll live. If he doesn’t, it’s probably his own fault.”

“You seem very certain of that,” he muses, tapping his forefinger against the datapad’s polymer casing. “Have you done something like this before?”

“Why are you here?” she asks in that same surly tone, ignoring his question altogether. “Why am _I_ ,” and she pauses to jerk her chin upwards, gesturing to the room at large, “ _here_?”

Something in his posture changes. She’s not sure if that’s a good sign, or a bad one.

“I wanted to thank you,” he replies, in a manner that suggests thanking her has nothing to do with his purpose for being here. He studies her with a critical gaze. She keeps her mouth shut, and stares right back. He hasn’t answered her question yet, but neither has she answered his.

Finally, the man relents. “I’m a recruiter for the Alliance military.”

“And?” she prods, feeling suddenly cornered in her uncomfortable metal chair. “The Alliance must be desperate for more cannon fodder, if you’re scraping this close to the bottom of the barrel.”

“Yes and no,” he replies. “I’d be lying if I said we weren’t hurting for more soldiers, but I’m not looking for a powder monkey.” He tilts his head, and then asks, “Do you regret hurting that young man?”

The question throws her off -- as was likely the intention -- and she grinds her teeth in silence for a moment while she mulls it over. He probably wants to hear a _yes_ , to ensure that she is, in fact, capable of some kind of basic human empathy. She _is_ , and thinks to tell him so, but then remembers the look in the victim’s eyes when their gazes met. Something cold closes around her heart.

“No,” she says, and waits for the axe to fall.

There is silence, a long pause in the would-be interrogation that rubs at the frayed edges of her nerves. He looks thoughtful, but betrays no other emotion on his features. She braces herself for a blow, in whatever form it may take.

“You have to be eighteen to enlist,” he says, breaking the tension of their silent stare-off. He almost seems to be talking to himself, though his gaze never moves from her, “but that can’t be far off, can it?”

“No,” she says, even though she has no idea when her actual birthday is. She just picked a day, once a year, to keep track of her own age. _Cinco de Mayo_ is marked annually all over the city, which makes it easy to remember, even without checking the date on a regular basis. “Six months.”

Again, she feels like she’s missing something. Some context clue that might explain his presence, as well as the subsequent line of questioning. Is he seriously talking about recruiting her?

He nods, apparently satisfied with her answer. “Do you have any formal schooling?”

“No,” she says again. She knows how to read and write on a rudimentary level, but only because she taught herself. Her mind is going into overdrive, trying to figure out what this is about.

“Six months is a good amount of time to acclimate. Marines are supposed to have some schooling, but, as you said, they’re not so picky nowadays. Arcturus Station is a bit cramped, but I get the feeling you won’t mind.”

She stares at him, her lips parted slightly in what is as close to open-mouthed shock as she’ll ever get. Her train of thought comes to a screeching halt. The words _acclimate, marine_ , and _Arcturus_ spin around her mind, competing for space with a staggering amount of disbelief. She didn’t actually think he was serious. They want to send her to _space_?

“Why _me_?” she asks when she finally finds her voice again.

“As I said,” he replies, leaning forward to fix her with a shockingly sincere stare. She is jarred once again by his strange familiarity. The pieces begin to fall into place. _Help me_. She suddenly realizes why the police bothered to show up at all. “I wanted to thank you.”

 _Ayúdenme_. She had thought the girl was just another street rat, caught in the wrong place, at the wrong time, but this makes much more sense. The police _didn’t_ care about her, or the guy she beat to within an inch of his life. It was the third party -- the young woman, the victim -- that had warranted involvement from law enforcement. Yes, she can see it clearly, now; there’s a strong family resemblance.

“Is she going to be okay?” she finds herself asking, before her brain has time to catch up with her mouth. She’s startled by how relieved she feels when his response is precipitated by a rueful smile.

“Yeah,” he responds, and actually lets out a laugh, though the troubled expression has yet to leave his gaze. “ _She_ was worried about _you_. I don’t think she expected you to make it out of that fight quite as well as you did.” He gestures at her bandaged knuckles.

“I have a lot of practice,” she replies, bitterly. If he finds her response curious, he doesn’t show it. Instead, he stands, and tucks the datapad under one arm.

“I’ll have them let you go,” he says, moving towards the door. “You can meet me outside when you’re done here.” And just like that, he’s gone.

Nobody can quite figure out why, when they come to uncuff her a few minutes later, Nikole Shepard is caught in fit of riotous laughter.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't speak Spanish so I apologize for any glaring mistakes in language. I tried to stick with informal, and also add some (supposed) Argentine colloquialisms. 
> 
> I have other stuff already written for this Shepard but it still needs editing. I figured some character background was a safe place to start.


End file.
